Extraction shooters seem to be having their moment of late, but since its quiet early access release date last year, Dark and Darker has been making a splash by taking the “shooter” out of “extraction shooter” and swapping the big screen for the small.
An extraction shooter set in a low fantasy world with no guns to be found is, granted, a compelling pitch. Toss in some sword-and-sorcery gameplay and add a crushingly difficult dungeon that makes the stakes inherent to the genre feel all the more real and you have a recipe for success, as evidenced by the thriving playerbase it’s enjoyed over the past year. Soon, however, it’s going to have an all-new audience: The mobile market.
The mobile version of Dark and Darker may come as a bit of a surprise to casual players, but its publisher—South Korean holdings company Krafton—has a history of out-of-left-field mobile ports (anyone remember PUBG?) The idea seems to be for Dark and Darker to follow in that previous title’s footsteps, making a big impression on PC before sliding onto mobile platforms to take the Google Play and Apple App stores by storm.
Presumably, this also means we’re going to get a console version at some point. The mobile version’s announcement at Opening Night Live left many fans scratching their heads at this step being left out in the game’s transition to mobile and all that money being left on the table.
Still, whether it’s on the Switch, Xbox, mobile phones, or whatever else, I’m always happy to have more Dark and Darker. The PvPvE setup means dangers are always lurking around every corner, whether human or computer-controlled; played right, it absolutely becomes a masochism simulator as you scramble to escape with your loot, but it’s a good pain.
The mobile version looks by all accounts to be a slightly uglier but still feature-complete version of its more intensive big brother, and knowing that the game will be right there in my pocket urging me to come crawling back might turn out to be a problem.
Dark and Darker‘s mobile version is in closed beta but will be released in full sometime this year.
